I have searched the blue dragon website but cold not find any useful information on what it is. What is blue dragon? What is it used for and why would someone use it?
Blue Dragon is a CFML Engine that runs on the .NET framework, produced and maintained by New Atlanta. New Atlanta previously also created and maintained a Java port of their CFML engine, but released it as Open Source under the name Open Blue Dragon and the GPLv3 open source license, in May of 2008. Open Blue Dragon is no longer maintained by New Atlanta, and instead is maintained by a steering committee.
The BlueDragon family is an alternative CFML engine, that runs on Java, .NET and Google's App Engine.
It comes in many different flavours, including commercial and open source versions. The commercial versions are maintained by New Atlanta. The open source version is a completely separate build, maintained by members of the community. The majority of the development is performed by aw2.0 http://www.aw20.co.uk/ and is released under a GPLv3 license, with an exception that lets you bundle the engine without you having to GPL your CFML code.
The vast majority of CFML applications will run unchanged under BlueDragon and OpenBD. BlueDragon has been on the scene for over 10 years and has spearheaded many new functions and tags that have since been adopted by other CFML engines (CFDUMP, CFIMAP, CFTHREAD, CFINTERFACE for example).
Main Site
http://www.openbluedragon.org/
Background
http://www.openbluedragon.org/about.cfm
Documentation
http://www.openbluedragon.org/manual/
So what does open source mean to you? Well basically, the ability to ship your solutions in one of the worlds richest languages, without incurring any license costs to you or your client.
Open BD has the distinction of being the only flavor of CFML that will run on Google App Engine. However, it is actually a separate version of Open BD, and can lag the Open BD current build in features as a result. For this reason, the Railo folks (Sean Corfield/Mark Drew) have said they will not be supporting Google App Engine (a separate build is necessitated by the restricted environment, where I/O really isn't available, etc) I'm unaware of Adobe's plans, who are likely more tighter lipped than open source projects. As a result, if Google App Engine is in your future, Open BD is your only choice at this juncture.
Related
I am going to develop a cloud application and in my research for state of the art tools in Cloud Computing i saw some references to OCCI (Open Cloud Computing Interface).
I was not able to find out an answer to the following questions
1)Is it easy to use this Interface ?
2)What programming languages does this interface Supports ?
3)Is this Interface mature enough?
Any information are well appreciated!
This question has been asked quite some time ago but, hopefully, the answer is still relevant.
Is it easy to use?
Depends on what you want. If you want to make your own implementation, then probably not. If you use one of the existing implementations (see bellow), then yes.
What programming languages does this interface Support?
We know about two implementations (libraries, CLI), which are for Ruby and Java. See:
https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/rOCCI:ROCCI
https://github.com/EGI-FCTF/jOCCI-api
rOCCI (the first one) also as a server side (the rOCCI-server) that translates OCCI to propriatary cloud management platforms such as OpenNebula.
Is this Interface mature enough?
Yes, given that it is being used by real-world infrastructures. Among them, e.g., the EGI Federated Cloud. That said, the current OCCI specification (1.1) has a few shortcomings that will be addressed in version 1.2 (due in Autumn 2015), so that if someone is just starting a project, it is worth implementing with 1.2 already.
Many of your questions can be answered (positively, by the way!) by visiting the OCCI-WG home site at http://occi-wg.org and/or searching on "occi implementation".
Another recent and useful resource is the tutorials and workshop talks given at the recent Cloud Interoperability Week held simultaneously with events in Madrid and Santa Clara, part of the Cloud Plugfest hands-on developer training series:
Or generally at http://www.cloudplugfest.org/
The basic specs are published by the Open Grid Forum.
The Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) is a set of specifications delivered through the Open Grid Forum, for cloud computing service providers. OCCI has a set of implementations that act as proofs of concept. It builds upon World Wide Web fundamentals by using the Representational State Transfer (REST) approach for interacting with services.
I wanted to know some general throughts about Marmalade and AppEasy. http://www.appeasymobile.com/
I've been following DrMop's tutorials on creating a game engine in Marmalade but noticed that since the tutorials he's gone on to make AppEasy(with others). I have looked at it and have a couple of immediate concerns
1) How easily I can incorporate text files/xml files with XOML.
2) What degree of control I would have over the code base.
3) How deep the engine is and whether it has any comparitable rivels which are better.
I've started the project I'm working on with the IWGame engine that DrMop was using in his tutorials but was wondering that if all my fears are unfounded if it is worth carrying on?
Cheers,
Support for IwGame is coming to a close. IwGame is being replaced by the AppEasy Core SDK, which is an open source portable engine where Marmalade is just one of the platforms that it plans to support. AppEasy Core will also be open source so others can contribute to its development, submit bug fixes etc..
XOML + Lua or XOML + C++ or all 3 used together provide a very powerful easy to use environment. You can easily integrate text files, XML files, image files, sound files etc. You should check out the official web site appeasymobile, theres plenty of documentation and a drag and drop app builder that spits out cross platform apps based on XOML + Lua.
Cocos2d-x is a good alternative, but you will need to set up each dev environment for each platform you plan to support (massive pain to do) as it doesn't cross platform compile stuff for you. Although Marmalade do now have a stable interface to Cocos2dx which enables you to use Cocos2dx cross multiple platforms.
I have a large MFC C++ application that I would be very keen to port into AutoCAD and IntelliCAD. AutoDesk offer Object ARX for this purpose, which replaces the older and slower ADS technology. IntelliCAD, afaik only supports ADS. Has anyone out there done this, and if so which tools did you use and what pitfalls did you encounter?
I'm specifically interested in resources that will simplify the transition, and allow me to maintain seperate CAD based and standalone versions going forward.
Have a look at my answers to a couple of previous AutoCAD questions
Open source cad drawing (dwg) library in C#
.Net CAD component that can read/write dxf/ dwg files
If you were looking for the same code base to work both inside and outside of AutoCAD then the RealDWG approach may work for you since the code is the same - RealDWG doesn't need AutoCAD as a host application. The open Design Alliance libraries are for making stand-alone applications. Both have supported C++ for years & can be considered stable - well, as stable as CAD gets.
This blog (http://through-the-interface.typepad.com/) is a good one for RealDWG
One option to consider is to target AutoCAD and Bricscad. Supporting AutoCAD and IntelliCAD requires essentially two versions of code. Bricscad's goal is to be completely compatible with ObjectARX, and in my experience they are pretty close.
This at least simplifies the problem from supporting three instances (your standalone version, AutoCAD, and IntelliCAD) to supporting two instances (your standalone version and AutoCAD/Bricscad).
"DWGdirect is not just a SDK to read and write DWG files. It actually offers a full blown framework that can be used to develop a professional CAD application, complete with plug-in architecture and all." quote source
Has anyone here had any experience with running OpenBD or Railo in production? We have some legacy CF6.1 apps that need to be hosted somewhere and I'm wondering if OpenBD or Railo is stable enough for production use, won't require a great deal effort to migrate to, etc.
I'll chime in as the 'Adobe' guy and say that yes, both OpenBD and Railo are viable CFML engines. The main hurdles are around CFML compatibility. For the last decade Allaire/Macomedia/Adobe has been driving the CFML standard, but we've formed an open CFML Advisory board made up of various experts in the field to help drive the future of the language.
Today it seems that ColdFusion 7 is the foundational standard. From there the CFML standard seems to splinter between vendors. ColdFusion 8 added a number of exclusive features that haven't been added to the other engines and vice-versa with Railo and OpenBD. In the future, the CFML Advisory should solve this problem.
Using ColdFusion as the standard, I find the following two link to be the best places to understand the compatibility differences.
OpenBD Compatibility
Railo Compatability
Here is the url for the CFML Advisory group. They just started the site so there isn't too much info up there yet.
OpenCFML.org
The CFML compatibility in Railo is a major focus for us. If there are things in Railo that aren't compatible with Adobe CF, then please let us know about them and then we'll try to fix them asap. We are of course trying to get all the requirements of the CFML Advisory Committee implemented in Railo 3.1.x so that we can call ourselves CFML 2009 compatible.
AFAIK an engine should implement the core and the extended core to be called CFML 2009 compatible, but I guess the Advisory Committee hasn't agreed on this. In fact the vendors (like we are) should obey these standards and implement them accordingly.
If of course you experience any problems, just let the Railo Google group know or contact us at www.getrailo.com
Gert Franz
Railo Professional Open Source
Both are on par with CFMX 7 compatability so you shouldn't have any problems migrating a cf6.1 site to either.
Be for warned through that OpenBD DOES NOT support the CFDOCUMENT tag so PDF generation is going to be a problem. Railo on the other hand does.
Railo has an express version, which doesn't require an install and makes it real easy to see if an existing application works with it or not.
OpenBD also has a download and ready to run version, though I haven't tried it out, it should be as easy to setup as the Railo Express version.
It seems that there is project started for OpenBD to integrate the Flying Saucer project as a replacement for CFDOCUMENT support. More can be found here about this.
Absolutely! Both are enterprise class solutions and shouldn't pose too many problems. As rip747 mentions there are copies you can download to quickly test your applications compatibility.
As for performance it's generally believed that Railo is the fastest of the three engines while BlueDragon is the slowest. Although it's not currently in production I'm developing an application against Railo 3.0 and intend to deploy to Railo 3.1 once it's released.
Support for cfdocument will be included in the next "major" versioned release of OpenBD.
Just to give folks a bit of background on cfdocument support in OpenBD, a commercial library was used for cfdocument in New Atlanta BlueDragon, so that had to be removed when OpenBD went open source. The "hooks" are still in the OpenBD engine, however, so it's really just a matter of implementing the underlying functionality using an open source document engine, of which there are many.
I think replacedirect.nl recently migrated their webshop to railo.
Railo virtually has no documentation. It does not seem to be a priority for the core team, they have not managed the Railo open source project well. It is a case of lost momentum due to incompetency.
Railo is quite difficult to deploy on account of very weak documentation and consequently cannot be taken seriously. Furthermore the tag and function tags are empty when you scroll down to usage examples. This open source project and the team running it are a joke, completely out of touch with the recurrinfg complaints of install/config difficulties over the past 2 years.
Stick with Adobe Coldfusion which has good documentation or switch to another language.
Rob, mind if I try to solve your problem by providing a different solution than your question asks?
In that you mention an interest in hosting, just keep in mind that if you mean shared hosting, then you don't need to worry about the cost of the CFML engine. That will be born by the hosting provider, and amortized over the folks on the server. As such, you will find many low- (and even no-) cost CF hosting providers running on Adobe CF (and you'll find a range of them running different versions to suit one's taste, from CF 6, 7, 8, or 9, as I write today.)
There are various lists of CF hosting providers. I offer one (and also provide pointers to still other lists) at a category of my CF411 site: http://www.cf411.com/#cfhost
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I have to choose a platform for our product. I have to decide between The Qt Framework and Adobe's AIR. I am well versed with Qt as I have worked for the last two years. I looked up at the Adobe's site but all the info about flex, flash, ability to coding in HTML/ActionScript is overwhelming and confusing. I cannot understand the following about the Adobe ecosystem.
I have the following questions on Adobe AIR:
What language do I use for coding my application? (not just defining the looks of UI)
Like in Qt I use C++. Is it Actionscript?
Can we say AIR is only for making UI's for apps.
Where is the doc for the utility classes along with AIR?
e.g. http://qt-project.org/doc/ for Qt
Qt ships with a huge set of premade widgets that one can use. Does Adobe ship with any such widget set and if so where can i see it as in url?
I understand flex SDK is open source. Can I make commerical apps and ship them ? Does flex SDK ship everything (compiler, utility classes/widgets)
How much does AIR cost in terms of licensing?
Is there something in AIR that is equivalent to QGraphicsView of QT?
If you needs to access a lot of native libraries, you'll need to stay within your QT environment. Keep in mind that AIR is single-threaded and is run on the Flash Player (something that was originally designed for frame-based animations.)
However, depending on the style of application you're building, AIR might suit you just fine.
Beware that AIR can get confusing because there's a few different developer paths to creating AIR applications: 1) using html/javascript and the AIR SDK, 2) using Flash/Actionscript and 3) using Flex SDK and/or Flex builder. The last one is the most capable as far as coming from traditional desktop development background.
Small apps that are Web 2.0 for hooking into web services are good candidates for AIR applications. Things like the IM client Digsby would be great. My favorite AIR app that I've seen thus far is Basamiq Mockups. Other useful apps are TweetDeck. These are good examples of the types of things that are well-suited to solve with AIR.
You should visit the Adobe Showcase and look at some applications: http://www.adobe.com/products/air/showcase/
Also, if you're looking to just get out of the C++ game, I believe QT has some java bindings now...also I remember some python bindings, but never look at those myself.
As far as QGraphicsView, people have done similar things in Flex. I tried Googling right now but couldn't find them initially, but people have taken things like A large image, and then only displayed a current region in the window. Also, in the next version of Flex, they're acutaly building an official ViewPort component:
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Gumbo+Viewport
Go spend some time with this AIR application and then ask yourself if Adobe Flex and AIR are worth investing your time in mastering (be prepared to ask yourself why something comparable doesn't exist for the likes of C++/QT):
Tour de Flex
Tour de Flex is a desktop application
for exploring Flex capabilities and
resources, including the core Flex
components, Adobe AIR and data
integration, as well as a variety of
third-party components, effects,
skins, and more.
Some of your questions:
Flex can be coded in MXML and
ActionScript3. AIR additionally
supports HTML/DOM/JavaScript
programming as webkit HTML render engine is built into
the AIR runtime.
MXML is an XML declarative DSL that
gets compiled into ActionScript3
imperative code. It is quite good,
though, for declaratively coding the
graphical forms of the UI (i.e., the
views of the MVC pattern).
ActionScript3 has a heratige that is
founded on JavaScript, but it has
been embelished to the point it more
resembles Java or C#. It has package
namespace, classes and interfaces
with inheritance, class member
access protection keywords,
constructors, static members, and
some very nice additions over Java:
properties, events, data-binding,
and closures.
Flex style programming is also a single-threaded model that relies on asynchronous I/O interactions. This is a simpler model to program than multi-threaded Java Swing or C# .NET Winform apps, yet permits achieving the same net results of program behavior. I elaborate on that here:
Flex Async I/O vs Java and C# Explicit Threading
Flex is open source, you can download the SDK for free, there are no licensing costs associated with it. (see their FAQ)
They do ship a 'flex builder', which is some custom Eclipse I think, and which costs money, but you can perfectly work without it.
The docs can be found at adobe's livedoc pages. (which to some, is enough reason in itself to dislike Adobe ;))
I do wonder, if you are well versed in QT, why are you considering something else? Which advantages do you expect AIR to give you over QT?
I have some experience with both QT and Flex, but not nearly enough to weight one versus the other. I do know QT/C++ is much, much more mature than Flex/ActionScript.
If you already know QT, I don't think the time spend learning a new framework (and programming language) will gain you enough to be honest...
I've used QT and Flex (not so much Air itself though) and have found that Flex is faster for getting apps up and running as well as modifying, while QT gives you more control -- particularly in the installer. The Air app installer is pretty awkward, or at least it was when I tried it, though it may have been improved since then.
The big advantage of Air is that much of the code for it can be run in Flash inside web pages. You can't access the local file system etc. from the web for security reasons but just about everything else is portable.
I made the opposite move. I started working on Adobe stuff and moved to QT. The main reason for doing it was about Adobe framework limitations. When you are using Adobe stuff, you are limited to the tools that they produce, it is hard to introduce external frameworks or libraries, if can not do what you want with Adobe stuff. Usually, the solution to do this is to use sockets, which transforms a supposed "stand-alone" application on a client-server architecture. In addition, if you are using many external stuff it can be hard to manage so many different clients.
Using QT you can code in C++ and add any external framework or lib you want. Even though, some times it can not be easy to code it, is doable and with no "strange" system architecture.
If your looking for some examples of "fun" UIs using Qt and SVG, take a look at the KDEGames [1][2] and KDEEdu [3][4] projects. There's lot's of nice code there that uses QGraphicsView and SVG to created scalable interfaces. Of course note that's it's GPL so be careful what you "borrow" if your app isn't.
[1] http://games.kde.org/
[2] http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdegames/
[3] http://edu.kde.org/
[4] http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdeedu/
I'll second #Pieter's comment - if you already know QT, moving to a whole new environment is going to take a LOT longer.
QT has the advantage of being cross-platform, and very mature: there are libraries for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. I'm not extremely familiar with AIR beyond knowing it's from Adobe, but the product site seems to indicate that it's for rich internet apps (http://www.adobe.com/products/air/). If that's true, then QT would be the far better choice if you're developing a desktop application.